Water-damaged Pauley Pavilion floor at UCLA to be replaced

Earlier this week, athletic director Dan Guerrero said he was confident that the flooding of Pauley Pavilion when 20 million gallons of water washed onto campus from a broken water main would not affect UCLA’s basketball teams.

On Friday, he offered more specifics. The entire hardwood floor at Pauley Pavilion will be replaced with a “new state-of-the-art court” — one that should be ready by the end of October, Guerrero said in statement.

No details were provided on the cost of replacing the floor.

Pauley Pavilion underwent a $136 million upgrade just two years ago.

Men’s basketball plays its home exhibition game against Azusa Pacific on Oct. 31, while women’s basketball hosts a Nov. 2 exhibition against Westmont.

Collins Court in the John Wooden Center will also receive a new floor, but it will not be ready until early November.

UCLA women’s volleyball was slated to begin its home schedule there on Sept. 26 against Arizona. Guerrero said the athletic department is “currently evaluating all of our options” to find another venue.

Drake Stadium was fully cleaned by the end of Wednesday, just 24 hours after the water main break released the millions of gallons of water north of campus.

The UCLA Hall of Fame at the J.D. Morgan Center, the Gifford Golf Practice Facility, and the Bud Knapp Football Complex and Acosta Athletic Complex sustained only minor damage.

The announcement came as the university continued to clean up the mucky mess that occurred Tuesday when a century-old pipe broke on nearby Sunset Boulevard.

The amount of water released represented about 4 percent of the total used by the entire city on an average day and occurred in the midst of a prolonged state drought.

Elsewhere on campus, a parade of tow trucks removed about 400 vehicles that were submerged in the deluge, UCLA spokesman Tod Tamberg said. The process could take several days because workers were still pumping out water and digging through muck and debris.

About 270 cars not damaged by water were removed earlier and made available to owners.

UCLA officials said six facilities were damaged in the flooding. Two — the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center and the Drake Track and Field Stadium — were reopened Thursday, Tamberg said.

At the site of the broken main, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power crews cut away 66 feet of the damaged steel pipe. The ruptured section will be sent to DWP corrosion experts for analysis.

The Y-shaped junction will be replaced with a T-shaped connector for three pipes that will have extra steel plating to protect the joint. Crews were preparing two, 36-inch-diameter butterfly valves, each weighing two tons, as part of the repairs, a DWP statement said.

The repairs were expected to continue through Friday or early Saturday, with work then beginning to repair a gaping hole in the heavily traveled street.